IRVINE : ‘Celebrities’ Test New Hospital

Donald Trump suffered chest pains, Bette Midler gave birth and Mary Pickford had a kidney infection. The pretend-patients all ended up Thursday at the new Irvine Medical Center, scheduled to open to real patients later this year.

For fun, celebrity names were given to about 40 volunteer patients during the hospital’s full-scale, three-hour shakedown, said Elizabeth A. Mishreki, a spokeswoman for the hospital. But the purpose of the exercise was serious.

Before the 177-bed Irvine Medical Center opens to the public, the hospital wants to find any snags in procedures or equipment or even if supplies are stored inconveniently. “It’s one thing to talk out and it’s another thing to actually do it,” said Carol Muench, a hospital employee who organized the simulation.

Mike Thornton, an oncology nurse who portrayed Trump during the simulation, discovered a minor problem. When his “wife,” Ivana (orthopedics nurse Rosemarie Dannis), and “girlfriend” Marla Maples (employee Margaret Tischler) began hurling loud insults at each other, and security workers intervened, no one heeded the patient.

“I kept saying, ‘I’m having more chest pains, I’m having more chest pains’ and nobody heard me,” Thornton said.

Several of the volunteer patients also complained during a noontime debriefing at the end of the simulation that elevators ferrying patients between floors ran as slow as molasses and that raised areas on some floors made for bumpy gurney rides.

About 200 hospital workers and doctors who participated in the event were scheduled to be debriefed today, Mishreki said.

Originally intended to open in early summer, the $100-million Irvine Medical Center still is undergoing its state and local approval process, Mishreki said. The hospital, on the northeast corner of Sand Canyon Road and Alton Parkway in the Irvine Spectrum, will be the first hospital to open in Orange County in about 20 years.

After the exercise Thursday, Thornton relaxed and told Dannis, playing Ivana at his bedside, that he liked the hospital.

“Maybe we should buy it,” Dannis said.